Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- The Council of Canadians sets out the key numbers in the Libs' all-talk, no-action federal budget, while David Macdonald highlights its ultimate lack of ambition even when there's plenty of fiscal room to work with. David Reevely focuses on the grand total of zero dollars allocated to the headline issue of pharmacase. Angella MacEwen questions the framing of the budget as a meaningful step toward gender parity when it utterly ignores child care and other necessary steps toward equity. Jeremy Nuttall writes that the Libs are doing little to ameliorate poverty. And Josh Wingrove notes that the infrastructure funding which Justin Trudeau made the economic centerpiece of his 2015 campaign has been relegated to campaign promise status again for 2019.

- Neil Macdonald discusses how the Libs' real actions as a government are systematically far more gloomy than their PR. And the Canadian Press notes that the federal government's gap between promises and actions on climate change has only been getting worse under Trudeau, while Marc Lee is the latest to note the false assumptions behind pushes for fossil fuel expansion in the face of climate disaster.

- Meanwhile, Jeff Goodell takes a look at the impending wave of climate migration as one of the readily-foreseeable consequences of climate change. And Jonathan Watts writes about the unprecedented Arctic winter melt which suggests some of the most dire climate projections may be coming true decades sooner than anticipated.

- Finally, Steven Chase and Robert Fife report on the fallout from Anbang's takeover of B.C. retirement homes now that it's been taken over by the Chinese government. And Paul Willcocks discusses how seniors stand to lose out when their needs and interests are treated as secondary to those of international capital.